Polish visual artist based between London and Kraków.

Zula Rabikowska was born in Poland, grew up in the UK and her practice is influenced by her experience of migration and in her work, she explores themes of displacement, belonging and gender identity.

Zula has always been interested in storytelling and she has obtained a BA in English Literature in French and an MRes in Postcolonial French literature from the University of Warwick.

Studying literature and stories of others has inspired Zula to turn the lens on herself. In 2019 Zula has obtained an MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography from London College of Communication, and since then she has been largely focusing on her own journey of migration and the meaning of home. In her practice, Zula often works with multimedia, film and digital and analogue photography, and incorporates archival images and documents to challenge conventional visual story-telling norms. Zula’s work has been exhibited and published internationally. She has won the AOP Emerging Talent Award and the PDN Edu Award in 2020, and is a recipient of the MEAD Fellowship Grant, which has enabled her to document contemporary gender identity in Eastern Europe.  

Her work was selected by the OPEN20 Moving Image, shown at Winchester Gallery and Enjoy Museum of Art Beijing in China.  Zula and was nominated for Budapest International Foto Awards, Moscow International Foto Award, Prix Levallois, BarTur Photo Award Leica Magazine Photojournalist of the Year.

Zula’s images have been featured by numerous publications such as the BBC, The Guardian, The Calvert Journal, The Culture Trip, Reckless Magazine, South West Collective, Photograd, She’s Got Wonder, Saigoneer, Café Babel, Stories from Poland, The First News, Coolura24, and Londynek.net. Zula also works as a freelance photographer in London and Kraków (Poland).

In May 2020 Zula co-founded the Red Zenith Collective, a platform for womxn and non-binary creatives from Central and Eastern Europe.

Nothing but a Curtain

 I travelled 4,552 miles across the “Former Eastern” bloc to document post-communist gender identity.
These images tell the story of gender identity and womanhood in countries once behind the Iron Curtain, the former socio-political barrier that divided the “East” from the “West”. TIn the summer of 2021, travelled along the former Iron Curtain border to 25 different locations across Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungry, Romania and Bulgaria and photographed 104 people.  I worked with women, non-binary, gender-fluid and transgender people who like myself, were born in or after 1989 after the Berlin Wall fell down.

Countries once behind the Iron Curtain continue to be reduced to the term “Eastern Bloc”, which lumps a diverse population into a homogenous and unrecognisable mass.  My aim is to challenge traditional stereotypes about womanhood and gender and highlight the countries once behind the Iron Curtain have a unique and diverse identity, but one which is also distinct from its “Western” counterparts.

To incorporate the divisive history between the “East” and the “West” I shot this project on a Kiev 80, a Soviet analogue camera made in 1978 in a Ukrainian military factory. The metal shutter of the camera imprints a metaphorical “curtain” within the images, echoing the way the Soviet history has shaped contemporary gender identity. It’s been over 30 years since Communism fell, yet stereotypes about Central and Eastern Europe prevail to this day. Growing up in these regions means facing male-dominated political systems, sexist stereotypes, restrictive beauty standards, or religious oppression.